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| Monday, July 31, 2006 |
| I Hate Grapevines |
Has it really been a Whole Week since I posted last? Deary me. How Time Flies. And I have done some interesting things, which you will all have to wait to hear about until tomorrow, because I don't feel like blogging right now. Instead, treat yourselves (or bore yourselves to tears, one of them, your choice entirely) with this. It was to be an element of last year's Nanowrimo effort. More accurately, WILL be an element of last year's Nanowrimo effort, which I still work on occasionally.
The Story of the Falanhi
In the time when the world was yet young and barely formed, People were created from the veins of the earth and the Children of the Stars were with them. The Children did not create the People, yet the Children were fascinated with these beings, who looked like the Children but were not the Children. From the veins of the earth were People made, and the reflected the colours of the earth’s veins as the Children of the Stars reflected the pale, cold light of the stars themselves. Bronze, copper, silver, gold and iron was the hair of the People, and the shining Children saw them and could not resist them. They went down from the heavens to walk with the People, and speak with the People, and soon they were so captivated by the varied beauty of the People that they took lovers among them.
The Creators, the parents of all that is and was, were unhappy with the Children of the Stars. For the Children of the Stars were made for their own purpose, and People for a purpose also. The Children of the Stars were stronger than the Earth’s People, as they drew strength and power from the stars they belonged among. As long as the Children of the Stars were besotted by People, they forsook their own purpose, and the People could not become their own tribes as long as the Children dominated them. So the Creators took the Children aside and spoke with them, and gave them their choice: the Children could return to their own places and purposes, and the Creators would take away from them the ability to return to the places of the Earth’s People; or, the Children could remain in the world, in the places of People, able to watch them and be near them but unable to walk with them or be with them.
So the Children made their choices, each of them deciding as it pleased themselves. Some of them returned to the places and purposes of their birthright and mandate, and from these the Creators took away the ability to return to the places of the Earth’s People. Some of them remained with the Earth’s People, and these the Creators turned into great birds, so they could soar above the People they were so enraptured by and watch everything they did, but could never again be among them. The People called them the Falahandra, and all of the People knew they had once been the Children of the Stars.
Never again would the Children of the Stars be seen among the Earth’s People.
Many of those Children who chose to remain and were turned to the greatest of birds to be seen in the sky above the earth were those who had taken lovers among the Earth’s People. A number of these had given children to their lovers, or become with child themselves, and it was as these children quickened and grew within the wombs of their mothers that the Children of the Stars were set into the skies. Those Children who were pregnant gathered on a high mountain top, where they laid their eggs in great nests lined with their own feathers. When the eggs hatched, the infants inside were not birds or Children, but like People – and yet not like People. Across their backs and shoulders and arms was a layer of the finest down, and their tiny hands and feet bore claws where People had fingernails. As they opened their mouths and cried for milk, the Children took them up in their claws and bore them down to the cities of the Earth’s People, leaving the infants in the town squares and in front of the homes of the greatest leaders of the People. Seeing the feathers and claws of the babies, the People knew that they were not foundlings to be raised as scrap-boys, and they took the downy infants to the great Palace in the South. As the infants grew and their down gave way to feathers, they were called the Falanhi. The Falanhi were much honoured by the People, and became great men and women. They had wings, but too small to lift them from the ground – only enough to remind them that part of their ancestry was not of the People. Like their parents before them, they looked upon the Earth’s People with rapture, and many took husbands and wives from among the People. The children of these unions, though, bore none of the feathers and claws that marked their parents. Only those Falanhi who took partners among the Falanhi bore Falanhi children.
The Falanhi grew in strength and power among the People, because the People loved them and revered them. As time passed, the Falanhi became rulers and monarchs among the People, and from the great Palace in the South they built an empire. Because the Falanhi were descended from the Children of the Stars, they drew some power from the stars as their parents had done. But the Falanhi also drew their ancestry from the People, and because of this many of them became intrigued by the study of the earth from whence the People were created. They studied closely the powers and laws of metals and gems, and through this study became stronger and more powerful, and ruled over the Earth’s People so that as time passed, and the People forgot the Children of the Stars and the Falahandra, the People began to fear the rulers they had once loved.
The Creators saw this, too, and were sad. They could not bear to take from the world they loved the Falanhi, who were after all descended from the Earth’s People as much as from the Children of the Stars, and still had a place and purpose there. Instead, they took the People from the Falanhi, and spread them over the world according to the veins of the earth they were made from. The golden People to one land, the iron People to another, and so forth. In this way they also took from the Falanhi some of the power and strength they had gained through their study, dividing and scattering the metals and gems so the Falanhi could not use their combined strengths to further their own ends.
The women of the Earth’s People who carried children sired by the Children of the Stars, however, did not give birth to feathered Falanhi. Instead, their infants had reflected in their eyes the Children of the Stars, white as starlight, and in their touch the cold of the stars themselves. At first they were recognised as descendants of the Children, and brought into the communities of the Earth’s Children. But in time, as the People forgot the brief age when the Children walked among them, they began to despise these pale-eyed cold-fingered ones, and called them Saparden, meaning empty. The children of the Saparden sometimes bore their features, and sometimes not. Where the child of one of the People and a Falanhi would be wholly one of the Earth’s People, the child of a Saparden may have appeared to be one of the Earth’s People, but later bear a Saparden child. The Saparden were rumoured to hold unearthly knowledge, to practice dangerous arts, and became despised and cast out. As the Falanhi became strong, the Saparden became creatures to be feared and loathed. They lived on the outskirts of towns and villages, and became slowly more shy. Saparden children would sometimes be taken to the woods and abandoned, and some Saparden made it their business to ensure these children were found and brought in. Although the Saparden became seen less and less frequently, and began to pass from the daily minds and cares of the Earth’s People, they still could not forget the love of the People that ran in their blood. But where the Falanhi admired and worked with the metals and gems of the earth, the Saparden were drawn to the living warmth of the People. Some of them studied and practiced healing arts, the better to understand the life that beat and flowed warm in their own bodies – the legacy of their Earth People parentage – while others became fascinated by the likeness of the People in the other creatures that walked upon the earth. Thus, woven into the web of rumour and legend that grew about the Saparden, came stories of their powers over all that lived and breathed, from beasts in the woods and cattle in the fields to house animals by the fire – and even the People themselves.
When the Creators scattered the People, the Saparden begged to have a place of their own, apart from the People who feared them and the Falanhi who despised their Saparden cousins. This the Creators granted, but some Saparden feared for the children that may be born to the Earth’s People, and begged to be sent about the world with the People. This the Creators granted also to those Saparden who asked it.
And the People grew and prospered in their different lands, until the Falanhi and the Saparden became part of history, then of legend, then finally of myth, and their power in the World was scattered and gone. |
posted by Ata @ 3:58 pm  |
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